Earth: Making of a Planet

Imagine cameras have been around since the creation of Earth to record every major event.

Take a photographic journey through time from the violent birth of our planet four and a half billion years ago, through ice-ages, massive volcanic eruptions and the dinosaurs' reign to the first humans. For the first time, see the incredible story of our planet unfold in one single, seamless camera move.

The history of our planet is an epic journey. From its birth out of cosmic rubble to the unique complex of land, sea, atmosphere and life we know now. See how water was transported to Earth's surface inside millions of meteors.

Through CGI recreations, meet the inhabitants of Earth over the ages, from slimy mats of algae to the great dinosaurs and the ancestors of mammals and humans.

82 Comments / User Reviews

If you get the message that the video is "unavailable", use a VPN to watch it as Google is tracking you and not allowing it to be viewed in certain countries. (Google's Pres-CEO is basically a puppet of every gov't on earth, remember?). I just downloaded the entire video using Opera browser as Pale Moon let me know it was "unavailable".

What "infinite god" are you talking about? Show proof for your claim. There are no heavens, we are on a pale blue dot, in the outer arm of the milkyway galaxy, at minimum one of 176 billion galaxies that all have a limited life span in the universe as a whole, (atrophy)

nyran125tk
- 11/22/2013 at 06:58

doesnt mean we arent created....you are STILL a creation, if you like it or not.

Tim
- 05/26/2014 at 13:40

He is true Achems. Science does create.

TheOtherRosie
- 04/02/2015 at 09:49

So who or what created your god?

flauta
- 12/19/2018 at 03:53

Why is a creationist wasting time learning science?

Elizabeth Wesley
- 04/02/2013 at 23:52

Nicely done but it seems to be based on theory and speculation. Nothing said about the incredible variety of life from fleas and millions of other insects, cardinals to all the other varieties of birds, reptiles, animals and all the varieties within the species. Who has ever answered that except the bible. I'm sticking with creation, each after their own kind. Amazes me every time I think about it.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster says all life was created by its pasta machine. Just as valid as the bible, if not more. Prove me wrong and I'll listen and believe.

TheOtherRosie
- 04/02/2015 at 09:50

Actually, much of the bible has been debunked. Some came from much earlier pagan writings, but a lot of it never happened at all. According to archeology & history.

Douglas Soares
- 01/17/2013 at 16:45

Only the first minutes concerning the Moon formation are worth watching. As for the rest, you had best watching Walking with Monsters (BBC), for the content and even the animal species shown are the same, only much more detailed on BBC documentary; and Earth Story (BBC), way more accurate and rich in Geology research lines.

Many of the concepts presented by NatGeo are oversimplistic and they tend to treat Evolution and Plate Tectonics theories as all of a sudden process, thing as "The Earth moves again" (as if its plates have ever stopped). As a matter of fact, the name 'The Making of a Planet' is too misleading if you expect a Geology documentary - concepts and scientific data about it are very scarce if not totally inexistent. Again I suggest you see Earth Story - it is not very recent, yet one of the best documentaries ever released - very scientific and informative and has a beautiful soundtrack as well.

Brilliant stuff. It would be great if we could teach these kinds of documentaries to children in order to plant in them reality and love for science and help them gain an intellect that would combat religious indoctrination.

I typed Planet Earth in the (top of the page) white box Search this site...
Planet Earth doc comes on at the top of the list.
az

Jerald Eckman
- 03/23/2012 at 06:55

A while ago (2010) I saw a documentary that was maybe 3 hours long or more (I also believe it was on NAT GEO) that used many of the exact same computer graphics that this documentary used to show the evolution of life on earth from the very beginning all the way up to man... I know it was the same, because the animations for the first crustaceans was identical... This doc I am referring to also used a ticking timeline just as this doc did. I have been searching for it for months but I just can't find it. Does anyone know the name of the doc I am referring to?

Yeah, he was such a prankster. Running round, burying dinosaur bones - 'HA! we'll see who believes in me now!' (Bill Hicks)

Regards, Sam.

SonofPlato
- 03/23/2012 at 13:23

And on the third day God created evolution...

Regards, Adam.

john smith
- 03/01/2012 at 16:34

Great doc, i agree, but i must say im a little disappoint in hearing many people putting down the religious debate. While i am by no means religious, and do not believe in God at all, i am a scientist and all science is best guess only. We can only progress in science by accepting (believe) in what we have read before, so therefore every scientist works of a belief. In addition to this, within the science world we have to accept that everything we think of as a fact could be proven wrong at anytime. For example, the higgs boson has still not been found after a 40 search, and yet allot of are scientific understanding of gravity relays on this elusive particle existing. If by the end of this year it has still not been discovered, as a community, the science world is now starting to admit it might not exist at all. If this is the case its back to the drawing boards on the subject of gravity, and quite allot of science we teach children now will have to be revised. Therefore at the moment the facts we teach people might not be fact, hence in the science community we speak of chances rather than fact. It is for this reason that any good scientist will never state that God does not exist. Yes people cant prove a God exists, but like wise we cant disprove it, and any good scientist will not condemn a theory unless proof can be presented one way or the other. It must also be pointed out that while science has explained allot, there is sill much room in the theory's of the present day to allow for the existence of God.
So for all you people putting the religious argument down for them not being able to prove the existence of God, i challenge you to prove he does not exist. Can you not see you are doing to them what you claim they do to science, use no evidence what so ever to come to a conclusion.

"You are a scientist? and science is best guess only??" You say only a belief system??

You are no scientist, if you are, then I just arrived from Pandora! I will go no further on your statements, do not want to waste my time.

Guest
- 03/01/2012 at 19:51

What makes a scientist a real scientist? or What makes a non scientist a true non scientist?
Just curious as to how it is measured.
az

Achems_Razor
- 03/01/2012 at 20:42

How it is measured? simple, all you need is common sense, and the (scientific method.) Not some pie in the sky beliefs.

Guest
- 03/01/2012 at 20:50

You think i am joking or pulling your leg. I am actually serious.
az

P V
- 04/19/2012 at 09:00

A accredited or "real" scientist is almost universally someone who has earned a Ph.D. during their academic career or is in the process of earning a Ph.D. (e.g. a graduate student). You can't be on the faculty of a university without having earned a Ph.D. This is why most, but not all, of the great research institutions are universities.

Lloyd Hendsbee
- 03/15/2012 at 03:49

The ignorant need no support of their ignorance sir..

Florin Stoica
- 05/04/2012 at 19:08

this is correct 100% but many of the people today that are talking about religion are actually talking about what men did with religion over time and i am saying men because you ladies out there have only allowed to vote for 100 years or so. in my opinion religion is an outdated way of control for the stupid masses of people that existed thousands of years ago in order for them not to kill each other .(stupid people exist today and you know them too) now considering that we haven't gotten allot more intelligent then we were back then but we only have more information gathered over thousands of years. and stupid people still exist. religion makes sense in the way that people should chose the values of religion and not what it tells you to listen blindly to. Religion doesn't help a smart being to evolve but it helps the stupid one make sense on why it's not good to kill you.

Over the centuries we have killed each other for countless of reasons. and for humanity to evolve and to search for the proper evolution answer. we need first to stop killing each other.

Kyle Colley
- 11/23/2013 at 06:34

first of all, science involves no belief...it involves a thought and then trying to prove that thought wrong...can god be dis-proven. in a word, yes....every explanation the bible gives as to the origins of our species and the origins and dates of the earths history have been proven false, we know how the earth formed. we know how the moon formed. we know how water arrived on our beautiful planet. so unless god is the sun, astroid belt, and a bunch of space debris...then god does not exsist in the manner humans claim. and although the higgs boson particle hasnt been found to date, it has more evidence proving it true then the bible by far. i mean lets face it people....there is NO PROOF OF GOD EXCEPT THE BIBLE!.....not one single scrap of info...none....where is the proof of the theory of evolution?.....all around us....in our very DNA. so no it isnt fair for anyone to denounce the beliefs of religious people,...instead we should treat them as children to young and immature to understand reality and let them keep their imaginary friend and savior to themselves. i apologize if i offended anyone. I just dont get how anyone can use the god argument and keep a straight face....thats the same as me saying....ive figured out what caused our high intelligence!!!!! it was a bean homo erectus ate.....an ALIEN BEAN....and why is this true???? because i read it in a book that some people wrote a couple thousand years ago. lol

Super documentary. Made me search Internet to find answers to many debatable questions like origin of water on Earth and origin of oxigen on Earth. Still no firm answers to these two let origine of life alone....

amazing documentary..really shows you that we're just a fart on this planet. loved the comments by everyone especially the ones praising the science and slamming all the BEARDS... why can't they just stop and accept the facts!
i'd love to see a part 2 showing us the projected geological movements of earth.. if they can go back 4.5 billion years they definitely can go forward!!

Well, I liked this documentary, considering they try to explain such vast expanses of time is 90 mins it was not a bad overyview. Agree with one comment below, a future doc speculating on the next 4 billion years would be fascinating. Also, why just someone always have to bring up the god thingy, no proof for god, never has been, never will be, just a load of circular reasoning to to fill the gaps in science, science progresses, religion does not so what are you god believers gonna do in say 100 or 200 hundred years from now when the gaps are smaller & fewer in number, oh well. GOD BLESS ATHEISM !

There is a big gap between a universe of chemicals, to single cell organisms. One cell alone is about a million times as advanced as the best supercomputers we have today. It just cant come to be from chemicals floating around. Im not religious, but for me its clear that there is something completely outside our capacity of thinking, that makes the real explanations.

The gap is explained by evolution which takes place over a very very very very long time. Such a long time infact that our primitive mammalian intellect cannot really grasp the numbers involved.

Wheras, the God of the gaps is far more complicated and infact needs a creator more complicated and advanced to exist in any case.

John Duong
- 12/20/2011 at 05:06

It is called the laws of thermo dynamic. A closed system as a cell is a better / more efficient way for energy to flow through. That was the "spark" that religious people will never understand. The more complex the system is, the more efficient it gets hence life flows in that direction from simplicity to complexity. The bigger, more complex you are, the bigger and more complex stuff you need to consume to stay alive. However once death occurs in the system, it is more efficient for that energy contained to flow out.. hence the degradation of its structure. Next time someone ask you what is life. Answer is simple: just energy transfer from one state to the other.

Charles Lozada
- 12/19/2011 at 06:39

Wait! there must be an error here. the earth is only 6015 yrs old!! I believe it because the bible tells me so.We are descendants of Adam and Eve and she was created from Adams rib! The origin of life and the "chosen people" was in Babylonia.
Jus' kiddin' folks!

Computer animation is getting better every time. 90 minutes to show how the earth formed and evolved and changed many times was explained quite well.
Perhaps there will be a documentary that uses past history to conjecture on what the planet will do in the next billion years.

they didn't go over the origin in life in great detail because:
a - this was a short overview of the history of the planet
b - the origin of life must necessarily be a very complex process
and
c - we dont have much knowlege about the matter

it was a nice doc - i especially liked the presentation of the early volcanic landmasses accreting into cratons & then continents.

would LOVE a detailed, animated presentation of the best current geological theories about early continental formation , AND some explanations why the continents seem to periodically come together to form supercontinentLand.

significant unanswered question no. 1; at 13:30 it says that a meteor storm at 3.8 bya left minerals like "carbon and primitive proteins made of amino acids" into the earth system. How did those proteins, or even the amino acids form? where did they come from? Until we answer questions like these, we are no closer to the answer of the origin of life than the cavemen were.

The short answer to your question is that the elements that make the protiens formed in stars, those elements then combine according to the chemical trends laid out in the periodic table to form compounds, like amino acids. These simple compounds in the right environment, which we have recreated in the labratory by the way, combine to form the protiens you spoke of. As a chemistry major I have worked with this stuff first hand. The question we are stuck on is how did the first cell membrane form, what cellular mechanism where in place in this first primitive cell, how did those specific protiens and so forth self assemble into a co-operative, functioning unit that could reproduce? Look into the Miller/Urey experiment if you would like verify some of what I have said. Also google, "Where do the elements come from?" Trust me, we know much more than you give us credit for.

Great Doc. I've been on a serious geology kick lately; it's amazing to think (or try to think) in geological time - frames that span hundreds of millions and billions of years. In order to grasp it at all, you need to throw out your internal clock and think about "apes walking upright" as if it happened yesterday. The scale of history is immense.

I once read somewhere, a statement that I always return to in my mind - that if you compressed geological time into a one-thousand page novel, human existence would be the period at the end of the very last sentence in the book.

We are simply "Evolution - Ver. 4,500,000,000.2012". A basic "software update" of life that's been happening since the beginning.

90 mins of pretty pictures, worth every one of them if only for the bewildered look on my little girls face. Great to see the cogs turning :)
Wonder how long before this gets hijacked by the Jesus Army ;))

"The Book of the Earth, a true story, about as best as can be told, currently, narrated in a mostly no-frills, straightforward fashion by one of the characters in the story (though not in the first person!), as opposed to the Holy Writ Comedy of Errors of Moe, Larry, and Curly, three previous attempts at a truly epic tale that quickly devolved into little more than an 8 minute pie fight, by comparison.

Appearing now in a brain near you!"

Guest
- 12/14/2011 at 19:09

This doc was nonsense anyway, the earth's hollow. The ancient aliens live in it and secretly cut endless stone blocks in preparation for the second coming.

capriciouz
- 12/14/2011 at 19:49

Please tell me that was a joke.

Guest
- 12/14/2011 at 19:58

Very tempted to say no but I'm a rubbish liar :)

Lloyd Hendsbee
- 12/15/2011 at 10:52

Grow up get a brain of your own and use it on something besides bullshit.

Demoorelizer
- 12/15/2011 at 10:55

Dude(fifty4fourty) was obviously joking, you must not have your sarcasm font installed right :/

Guest
- 12/15/2011 at 21:57

Easy tiger :/

Yavanna
- 12/15/2011 at 11:13

Finally - someone talking sense here!

PeSO821
- 12/14/2011 at 15:50

After watching this amazing documentary, you would expect most would be amazed by the fact earth was completely covered in snow for millions of years. I mean, really, how crazy is that?!

But it seems we are too busy with our earthly quarrels... OK. If somebody wants to believe in flying horses and burning bushes, I don’t care... They are the ones in a loss. Real life is so much more interesting.

This site is for people who want to know more than what they have been told by their elders.

I believe in the Unknown God, for all Scriptures have been written by men for men. The real God is both Creator and destroyer, "IT" just evolves and goes on in an endless cycle of Chaotic happenings. That God is so much more than the One contained in the bible and the koran.And we are continually learning more and more of the Universe.
which makes it even more wondarsalrous!! Make the best of it , it's not a rehearsal!!!

Wahyudin Syukur
- 12/14/2011 at 14:24

Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad have all one thing in common: to remind us that the universe and us the human are created with purpose.

And what is that purpose, good sir? Moses was obviously a schizophrenic, and so were Jesus and Muhammad. The exception with the last two is that they figured out how to turn their schizophrenia into a cult.

Charles Lozada
- 12/19/2011 at 06:32

Mo needed a GPS, was lost in the desert for 40yrs. J's miracles weren't that special and Big Mo rode a flying horse to heaven.... wait! these guys weren't historical! hysterical, YES!
These guys created a lot more money than Elvis, Michael Jackson and the Kardashians!!!

Charles Lozada
- 12/19/2011 at 05:48

no! what they have in common is that religions were made up because of them.

for what reason would you use the term "kaffir" in this context?..is "non-believer" not specific enough?..

Jamal Oneal
- 12/14/2011 at 11:23

Muhammad didn't talk about television either... but it exists.

Yavanna
- 12/15/2011 at 20:22

He who possessed knowledge of the Book said, ‘I will bring it to you before your glance returns to you.’ And when he saw it standing firmly in his presence, he said, ‘This is part of my Lord's favor to test me to see if I will give thanks or show ingratitude... (Surat an-Naml, 40)

This verse immediately puts one in mind of teleportation or image transmission (television). Some letters in Surat an-Naml in which this phenomenon is described come together in a mysterious manner to comprise the word “television.”